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Saturday, May 28, 2011

How wide should the paths be in a vegetable garden?

"How wide should the paths be in a vegetable garden?"

Gardeners everywhere are asking.

If they are too narrow, they are useless to all but the ants and coons.

If they are too wide, you've wasted valuable planting space.

Many people think they have the answer to this question.

Some people say the paths should be wide enough for two people to walk side by side. That may be true if the path is designed for ambling through the garden arm in arm with someone else, but who goes ambling arm in arm with someone through a vegetable garden?

Some people advocate for narrow paths, barely wide enough for you to shuffle sideways through the garden so you have more planting space. That makes it too hard to get around in the garden and so you won't get around and you'll abandon your garden, the weeds will take over, everyone will think it is ugly and no one will encourage you to plant another vegetable garden ever. "You'll just let it be taken over by weeds", they'll say, and you may never try to grow vegetables again.

Others suggest the paths needs to be wide enough for you to kneel in front of one bad without crunching the bed behind you with your backside.

Balderdash to all those answers! I've determined the perfect width for the paths in my vegetable garden and it is...

19 inches.

How did I choose 19 inches, you ask?

That's the width of the stand, the legs, the whatever you call them, on my wheelbarrow, plus a half inch on either side to set them down.

My wheelbarrow in the garden last year. It is 24 years old and still going strong.

Perfect. Brilliant. Now, I can confidently finish laying out the beds in the vegetable garden cathedral and finally plant.

The most important thing to remember no matter how wide or narrow your path is it should be wide enough that when you walk through the garden you are not walking close enough to the plant to compact the dirt around the roots.

My answer would be different, at my vegetable garden is currently just a set of raised beds in my lawn. This means my paths need to be 60cm/25" to allow the lawn mower to squeeze through. (And obviously this also leaves room for the wheel barrow to get through easily.)

Like Soren, mine are raised beds. But, unlike Soren, I don't have to mow between beds. Some have chips between them and under 2' of space, others dirt or weeds (depending on season!) and about 2'. That is enough for me since I don't use a wheelbarrow in the raised bed area.

24" fits good for me.Wheelbarrow to go through, and for you to easy manover. Or my tiller to go through if need it . 24" is the minimum.I am converting my flat soil to raise beds, for several reasons.1 to avoid tilling2 control weed easy3 better looking organization4 i can ran my water irrigation dydtem more efficiently.5 i can use my greenhouse system to cover some of the veggies for the winter in a much easier way. If you need ask me joaoribeirosa@hotmail.com.6 easy to work the soil. I use my organic compost easier.7 all raised bed surrounds i fill it with mulch that i get for free, and later on i can bring it indide the raised bed. My raide beds are 6"×48"×192"Its a win win dituation, i hope!Good luck to all of you.

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